Former Judge Silva donating items to UMass Dartmouth archives

Former Fall River District Court Judge Milton Silva has worn many hats throughout his long and storied life: He was a soldier, a funeral director, a judge and a politician. Silva’s story can be seen in images and artifacts on display at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth's Ferreira-Men...

Former Fall River District Court Judge Milton Silva has worn many hats throughout his long and storied life: He was a soldier, a funeral director, a judge and a politician.

Last week, Silva turned 90. In this chapter of his life, he is now a great-grandfather, and he remains active. Silva regularly plays gigs as a baritone saxophonist with the Swansea Community Band.

Silva’s story can be seen in images and artifacts on display at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth's Ferreira-Mendes Portuguese American Archives in a recently opened an exhibit that is made up of various items from throughout his life.

Among those items: the uniform Silva had worn and medals received from his service in World War II; a bumper sticker from when he ran for the state Legislature; and the robe he wore and the gavel he struck during his time sitting behind the bench in city’s the old district courtroom.

Silva’s granddaughter, Melanie Silva, helped to curate the exhibit. She had been helping her grandfather to compile a memoir for the family.

After the war, Silva finished embalming school and entered the family business as a funeral director. It had been in the family since the late 1800s. But his career as a funeral director wouldn’t last for long.

Silva said being a funeral director reminded him too much of the horrific things he had seen during World War II, especially in April 1945. As a medic and a truck driver in the U.S. Army’s 104th Infantry Division, he and his comrades were among the first American troops to arrive at Buchenwald, one of Germany’s largest concentration camps. They drove in the middle of the night. And then the smell of death hit them, and grew stronger.

“Milty,” said his comrade from the passenger's seat, “something stinks around here.”

“'There’s somebody dead around here,’ I told him,” Silva said. “And I thought it was just bodies by the side of the road.”

He didn’t know what a Nazi concentration camp was. Silva was unprepared for what they would encounter.

They found emaciated prisoners, alive but so sick and malnourished that they needed treatment on site. Then there were the bodies.

They were “stacked like cordwood,” Silva said.

Silva didn’t publicly talk about his war experience for 30 years, not until the Holocaust denial movement started in the mid-1970s, long after he became a judge and after he was married and started a family. He and his wife, Maria, have five children, 11 grandchildren and, now, two great-grandchildren.

Silva quit the funeral business, went to law school, pursued a legal career and eventually went into politics. He ran for the Fall River School Committee in 1954 and came in fourth place in a race for three spots. He still got on the committee after one of his opponents gave up his seat.

Page 2 of 2 -
Silva then served as commissioner of the Fall River Police Department for four years, and was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

Silva became a judge in the 1970s, a time when criminal law was going through a major shift nationally. The Miranda Rights were newly instituted for those suspected of crimes.

It was a learning process for law enforcement. There were often times when Silva would throw out cases because of inadmissible evidence. As a result, he earned the nickname “Not Guilty Milty.”

“For a while, I was treated as the enemy,” Silva said.

Silva soon found himself teaching a class to help police academy trainees learn how to legally collect evidence from criminal suspects.

Silva said that, as district court judge, he hated Fridays. Those were the days he’d hear juvenile cases — family court did not exist yet — and it was “heart-wrenching,” he said.

The memoir project has allowed the elder Silva and Melanie Silva some bonding time, and it’s been ongoing over the past few years.

“It’s a cool experience,” Melanie Silva said. “Stories get added in all the time ... and I’m in no rush to end it.”

The Milton Silva exhibit will be on display at UMass Dartmouth’s Portuguese American Archives at the Claire T. Carney Library through December. The archives are open Monday through Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.